from the solving-problems-with-more-problems dept.
Expanding the search for oil is necessary to pay for the damage caused by climate change, the Governor of Alaska has told the BBC.
The state is suffering significant climate impacts from rising seas forcing the relocation of remote villages.
Governor Bill Walker says that coping with these changes is hugely expensive.
He wants to "urgently" drill in the protected lands of the Arctic National Wilderness Refuge to fund them.
Alaska has been severely hit by the dramatic drop in the price of oil over the past two years.
In Alaska politicians are as with men: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday October 13 2015, @09:54AM
Sea level change, riiight. According to the NOAA data, sea level in Alaska is mostly sinking (or the land is rising). Prudhoe Bay in the north has the fastest rise, currently at 1.2mm/year. This is hardly a catastrophy.
Sounds more like the governor wants to use the Climate Change bandwagon to justify something. Something that might otherwise encounter opposition. Follow the money, see where it leads...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday October 13 2015, @01:21PM
There is no doubt that permafrost is melting wherever permafrost is sold...
Things built on them (huts, roads, transcontinental pipeline sources, airports, etc) are starting to experience structural problems due to the lack of actually having strong foundations. They're just slabs on ice, except for the things that have no slabs and are just rigged up on ice.
He can easily turn this into a great deal of job programs to repair the damage while calling it global warming related renewal or something, but that would be downright un-fossil fuel industry friendly, so chances are good it'll be to justify filling those pipes no longer at their peak, which coincidentally needs repair and oh look at all the other stuff too, so we need to drill even more out to fund it.
This time, they'll plan ahead for the next 20 years or so and actually drive stakes into the ground where necessary, at least until they have to drill into the ocean instead when they run out of "easily" accessed reserves. Then they can start another jobs program, then, too, perhaps a naval industry that needs funding to better ship in the newly opened arctic waters where the ice has receded.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Tuesday October 13 2015, @02:35PM
Considering Shell pulled off from Prudhoe Bay deeming drilling there too risky which was the great tax-free hope for the next decade of Alaska, I'd say it's quite the catastrophe for the governor's hopes of reelection.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bill Evans on Tuesday October 13 2015, @10:01AM
As of yet Alaska has no income tax or sales tax. Try that first before messing things up worse. Spoiled brats.
(Score: 3, Informative) by That_Dude on Tuesday October 13 2015, @11:00AM
I agree that this is a bad idea and I am in Alaska. However, I wouldn't call the majority of us anything remotely resembling spoiled.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 13 2015, @11:14AM
Are you telling me the fact that your state pays you rather than you paying the state doesn't make the rest of us a bit jealous? Back in the 1990's, some towns in the notoriously low-tax New Hampshire (there is no sales or income tax, and politicians routinely pledge to keep it that way) wanted to secede and join Alaska, because the state was considering a statewide property tax to pay for schools. Alaska of course said no way, but that oil payment was why they picked you rather than, say, Vermont or Maine.
This guy sounds no more nutty than the now-former governor who bragged about seeing Russia from her house, though.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by DiarrhoeaChaChaCha on Tuesday October 13 2015, @11:30AM
Except, she didn't: http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/russia.asp [snopes.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by BasilBrush on Tuesday October 13 2015, @01:50PM
And Al Gore didn't say "I invented the internet." Steve Jobs didn't say "You're holding it wrong." And Bill Gates didn't say "640K is as much as anyone will need."
But distortions are so much more fun than reality.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @02:16PM
Maybe he did. To his daughter, when teaching her how to use fork and knife correctly. ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:27PM
Which is close enough to "You're holding it wrong" in spirit :).
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday October 13 2015, @06:29PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Wednesday October 14 2015, @09:56PM
And Sarah Palin said something close enough to "You can see Russia from my house"... in spirit.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @07:15PM
Al Gore said [snopes.com] "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Seems to me that, of the examples given, it was only Bill Gates who was unfairly misquoted.
(Score: 2, Informative) by D2 on Tuesday October 13 2015, @11:16PM
Which he did. With a *stellar* array of internet pioneers attesting to how he both recognized the potential and regularly helped them get funding.
So, he didn't say he engineered it, which is what the mockery is intended to imply. But he did do what he said he did.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Wednesday October 14 2015, @09:59PM
And that is EXACTLY what Al Gore did do.
However he neither invented the internet, nor claimed he did.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:41PM
This is the quote from your own debunking:
The basis for the line was Governor Palin's 11 September 2008 appearance on ABC News, her first major interview after being tapped as the vice-presidential nominee. During that appearance, interviewer Charles Gibson asked her what insight she had gained from living so close to Russia, and she responded:
"They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska":
You're right, she never said the word "house." Such a meaningful distinction...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by That_Dude on Tuesday October 13 2015, @01:01PM
Come out to the bush and see what fuel and groceries cost and then we can talk. Better yet, sit out on the Aleutian Chain and wait for a fuel barge to show up a month late while you're freezing your ass off and continue your discussion from there. The "oil money" doesn't really amount to squat when the oil is processed somewhere else and shipped back here at higher prices. It's a bit of a wake up call when $100 of groceries doesn't even fill one shopping bag and a 600 mile life flight to a mediocre hospital costs over $15,000 and if it's really serious - you get the added life flight bill of being flown to Washington state. What is there to be jealous of?
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Tuesday October 13 2015, @01:54PM
Yeah I would say that people underestimate how difficult it is to live in Alaska. Many places around the globe are much like this, colonies that are not self-sufficient and require constant upkeep in order to allow the people to live there in reasonable comfort (reasonable being relative). I mean Greenland is being still subsidized by Sweden [wikipedia.org], to the tune of what $600 Million a year? And it only has a population of about 60K people, that's about $10K a person. And that is only direct assistance. Many other indirect assistance would push that number higher. So the Alaskan subsidies do not strike me as outlandish.
These places are not paradise.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Tuesday October 13 2015, @02:11PM
I think you mean Denmark, not Sweden.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Tuesday October 13 2015, @05:27PM
Yes, you are correct. My apologies :)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @11:23AM
...needs to destroy the world in order to save it.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Tuesday October 13 2015, @01:56PM
Yes when I saw the headline on bbc.co.uk my irony meter went off the frikin charts. I felt I had to submit this, but it was already in the queue, gj Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @11:54AM
You see, two can play this game. Need a reason? Climate change, that's why!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @12:46PM
(Score: 1) by WalksOnDirt on Tuesday October 13 2015, @04:29PM
The warmer winter would be much more significant. However, change is hard to get through, and watching houses wash out to sea because of the melting permafrost has to hurt.
After people get used to a warmer Alaska I doubt they will want to go back to the cold one. There are plenty of places where the population will really regret global warming, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13 2015, @10:18PM
...because it's unprofitable for the foreseeable future (partly because of Alaska's extraction tax). The state needs drilling. The solutions are obvious: raise or lower the tax rate, start a state-owned oil company, or have the state purchase an existing oil company.
Or, y'know, maybe diversify the economy a bit? Look at Russia.